Accessible. Approachable. Astonishing.

Every room a borrowed room.
Every chair tried on for size
Or posture
Stool-crouching
High-backed
Hardwood
And still
Perfection eludes us
Maybe it’s time to sit cross-legged on the floor.
The doors and keys changed year on year
Some had welcome mats
Some scrapers to knock off caked mud
You didn’t even realise clung to you.
The constants we carried from room to room:
The pearl-leafed teacup
The teapot
A spoon

Marketable Skills

Now I am naturalized and marketable
(thanks Maxine Kumin for the hint)
my brain is useful, my forearms strong,
I gleam with squeaky-clean scrubbing
You can forgive my skin the colour
Of midnight plums………..at least temporarily
when I apply gauze to your suppuration
snip cheerily (not to smile is a sin
when you come from the back of beyond)
My scissors not nearly as sharp as your corrections
of my grammarly faults
Tolerated, jostled, kept on
until something better, home-grown,
comes along.

You Are an Anthology

Of dedications, recipes, anecdotes, jokes.
Burnt bridges.
Spectre unwanted, you startle,
you linger
like ghosts in a monotype print.
You echo unbidden
each morning, at night
the rat-tat smart order you invert.

You carry each country inside,
each stage of your journey,
some best forgotten, but still
they reverberate like a tired organ
in an obscure village church
slightly false, straining,
smile a plaster to cover grazed skin.
Wallpapering wounds.

You are a collection
of sinews too stretched
of nerves beaten tender
of bridges not crossed
pathways not followed.
Old habits dying too hard too soon.

Marina Sofia is a global nomad, blogger and writer, currently living just outside London. She is finding it more and more difficult to stick to the narrow confines of her corporate day job, so her escape has been to publish poetry and short fiction in online and print journals, as well as in a couple of poetry anthologies. She is also currently working on a crime novel, but spends far too much time on Twitter @MarinaSofia8 or blogging: https://findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com/